And here I was thinking any psyop was necessarily bad.

The leadership of nations requires you to put pressure on the thoughts and minds of your people, left to their own devices those minds will simply be shaped by someone else.

The morality in it comes from your motivation and methods. Secretly giving piles of money to the weirdos you successfully identify as being the leaders of artistic movements to amplify those movements can't be all that bad.

The question of the day is if you were the CIA trying to do the same thing today, who and what would you fund?

I would fund things which make people less susceptible to manipulation and more equipped to think for themselves.

Because I believe in democracy not as a political tool but as a fundamental right. I don’t wish to use democracy to gain more power.

But maybe that’s why I’ll never be in that position, to make that choice.

Are you saying modern art is positive?

Do you not appreciate art?

I like bananas.

https://www.npr.org/2024/11/21/nx-s1-5199568/a-duct-taped-ba...

That's postmodern art, not modern art.

Okay, this is a bit too far xD. But I wouldn’t put this in the same bucket as Pollock. I genuinely find his work interesting.

Modern art is weird.

https://smarthistory.org/andres-serrano-piss-christ/

That's postmodern art, not modern art.

This could have been written at any point after the 1850s or so.

Indeed. Once galleries became significant buyers of art, scandalous art became an attractive thing to produce: it commanded outsized attention.

The dynamics are similar in Twitter today, too.

More likely it was a money laundering operation disguised as a psyop.

Oh man, I just listened to an episode of Decoder Ring about why making classical realist sculptures in the US is a challenge. It gives some interesting context about the rejection of realism in the post-war West:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-are-monumentally-ba...

Betteridge’s law prevails. A fun read, but not as fun as the title suggests.

tl;dr Modern art existed before the CIA and even CIA predecessors did not originate it, but they did push it abroad to show that America is great because we put up with modern art made by socialists depite most americans disliking both the art and the artists

Sounds like modern art was the kpop of its era.

Oddly enough kpop is the result of American music taking over the world.

lol i think the CIA is nowhere near competent enough to even consider that idea.

I don’t know if this is a reaction to AI or something, but recently I’ve only been interested in classical/realism art. I just can’t do abstract cubes anymore. The default wallpaper of windows 11 is a perfect example - I hate it. Give me a wallpaper of some painting from the Renaissance.

Kinda paradox because AI seems better at replicating complex classic paintings and realism than rather simple modern parametric imagery.

I feel like a picture of rolling hills with spring wheat and a blue sky wouldn’t go amiss

They should bring it back

(2020)

Some previous discussion:

2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36155204

“educate, inspire, and strengthen the hearts and wills of free men.”

Funny how times have changed and more or less everyone on every side is fighting for the strength and survival of their own groupthink and little more.

Eventually, people realize they will never agree and therefore don't have to fight.

They realize the majority of their beliefs already existed before they were born and will continue on after they're dead. They have nothing to add to the conversation while they are too busy fighting. They turn their focus to developing their ideas peacefully and let their subcultures flourish once again.

This isn't the first cycle and won't be the last. The last major cycle was in the 20th century due to broadcast media. I think people sometimes forget how relatively young the internet is.

"Live and let live" is in fundamental tension with "protect the weak." ALL aggressive ideologies act as heroes protecting others from oppression. There is a barely expressible thing that allows people to live in peace with those they disagree with. It is a personality trait, an aesthetic, a mood associated with the best of the Enlightenment but never described by it. Perhaps people need relative silence, a few good books, physical labor, hand-made goods, and slow travel to attain it. I often wonder at how boldly people think they can reduce the enormous, holistic experience of being of a particular time and place and call the effect simply "reason".

Far more things/movements are orchestrated than are organic. This is to me one of the most surprising things I have learned as I got older.